Every business needs leads. The biggest challenge for marketers is getting them.
Account-based marketing (ABM) and lead generation both offer a way to do this. Done right, both can help attract the kind of high-quality leads that become long-term customers and advocates.
Snowflake achieved over 300% growth with ABM. Templafy generated 475% ROI with lead generation. DocuSign combines both to fuel its sales funnel.
In this article, we’ll look at both disciplines, explaining what they are and when they’re best used. You’ll also learn how to approach ABM and lead generation to engage your ideal customer.
Account-based marketing is a team sport
ABM is a company-wide strategic approach to finding and converting specific accounts that add long-term value to your business, both financially and through industry standing and pulling power.
Where lead generation casts a wide net, ABM uses a spear to target and catch the best fish.
It flips the traditional sales funnel on its head, ditching the one-size-fits-all approach to marketing in favor of a land-and-expand approach.
The result? A higher ROI than any other type of marketing.
ABM treats each account as a target market. Marketing efforts revolve around engaging and closing the entire buying committee within those accounts.
Here’s an example:
When T-Mobile rolled out its unlimited data plan, contextual intelligence platform GumGum wanted them to see how useful its computer vision technology could be and highlight how the two companies could collaborate.
To pull this off, they wouldn’t run a hit-and-hope campaign to target a ton of brands like T-Mobile and pray they’d notice. They specifically targeted the T-Mobile account.
GumGum identified that T-Mobile CEO John Legere likes to support his company as often as he can, often wears the color magenta, and loves Batman.
Using this information, the ABM team created a comic book called T-Man and Gums and sent 100 copies to T-Mobile and its agencies of record. Within hours, Legere praised the work on social media.
Within days, they set a meeting and T-Mobile eventually became a client.
GumGum now also lists similar clients, including Vodafone and Sprint, a sign of how one big-name client can attract others.
For ABM to work, everything must be geared towards delivering personalized content that builds relationships. This required complete alignment across marketing and sales teams to engage, then close the deal.
Alignment can make all the difference to a business. It’s proven to drive more revenue, improve customer experience, and power growth.
ABM forces teams to get on the same page.
Without insight from salespeople, marketing teams can’t create content that resonates with ideal accounts. Without…
‘ + data.settings.title + ” : ” }}} ]]>
‘ + data.settings.title + ” : ” }}} ]]>
